For those of you just tuning in, last month I collected information from 246 professionally published novelists on how they made that first pro novel sale. This is rough, Mythbusters-style science. It’s not a perfectly controlled study, but it provides a lot more data than I usually see when we talk about these things.

Today I’m looking at two more myths about the writing process:

The Overnight Success
You Have to Know Somebody

The Overnight Success Story:

When I started writing, I figured it was easy. I thought anyone could do it, and having zipped off my first story, I assumed that fame and fortune would soon be mine. And why not? How often do we see the movies where someone sits down at the computer, and after a quick writing montage, they’re winning awards, hanging with Oprah, and living the good life?

So how long does it take to break in? Well, of our 246 authors, the average age at the time they sold their first professional novel was 36.2 years old. The median was also 36, and the mode was 37. Basically, the mid-to-late 30’s is a good age to sell a book.

But that doesn’t tell us how long these authors were working at their craft. So the very next question in the survey asked, “How many years had you been writing before you made your first professional novel sale?”

The responses ranged from a single respondent who said 0 years, all the way to 41 years, with an average of 11.6 years. Both the median and the mode came in at an even ten years.

You could argue that the single response from someone who had been writing for 0 years proves that overnight success can happen, and you’re right. It can happen. So can getting struck by lightning.

Here’s the breakdown in nice, graphical form:

I also asked how many books people had written before they sold one to a major publisher. The average was between three and four. Median was two. I was surprised, however, to see that the mode was zero. 58 authors sold the first novel they wrote. Still a minority, but a much larger minority than I expected.

I’m still going to call this one busted. Not as thoroughly busted as I would have guessed, but the bottom line is that it takes time and practice to master any skill, including writing.

You Have to Know Somebody:

This one goes back to the idea that it’s nigh impossible to break in as an unknown writer. You have to have an in. Without those connections, editors and agents will never pay you the slightest bit of attention.

This was a little trickier to test. I asked two questions:

1. What connections did you have, if any, that helped you find your publisher?

Met editor in person at a convention or other business-related event

Knew them personally (not business-related)

Introduced/referred by a mutual friend

Other

2. What connections did you have, if any, that helped you find your agent?

Met editor in person at a convention or other business-related event

Knew them personally (not business-related)

Introduced/referred by a mutual friend

I sold my book without an agent

Other

The most popular response in the “Other” category was “None” or “No connection at all.” Ignoring the “Other” category for the moment, all other responses were selected a grand total of 162 times. More importantly…

185 authors listed no connections whatsoever to their publisher before selling their books. 115 listed no connections at all to any agents, either. (62 others added that they did not use an agent to sell their first book.)

Combining the agent and publisher questions, a total of 140 — more than half — made that first professional novel sale with no connections to either the publisher or the agent.

The “Other” categories also included a small number of authors who reported winning contests, short story sales that attracted interest, industry connections, and in one case, SFWA membership.

I couldn’t figure out how to make a nice pretty graph for this one. My conclusion is that connections can certainly help. Agent referrals in particular — it’s always nice to check with other authors to see who represents them, and if you can get a referral, so much the better. But the idea that you have to have a connection? Or even that most authors knew someone before they broke in? That’s totally…

I’m not going to be able to get part three written up and posted before Millennicon, so look for the rest of the survey results some time next week. And thanks to everyone for the kind comments and e-mails!

I’m also curious to see about any cross relations (I’m sure there’s a technical term in statistics for that). For example, just looking at your two topics above, did authors who had a contact have a shorter time before their first sale or is there no correlation at all?

I certainly agree (and am happy to hear) that you don’t need an “in”, but I wonder if it might be a subtler effect of shortening the time or selling before your third or fourth novel.

I would be very interested in your running a corellation or a scatter-chart between the “short stories published before selling a novel” data and either the “years before first sale” or the “number of novels bofore first sale” data.

Thanks, Ken. That would be interesting. I don’t know whether I’ll get that into part III or not, but even if I don’t, I’ll also be posting the raw data so that others can continue to play with the numbers and see what else they can find.

Ken MarableMar 18, 2010 @ 12:06:43

That’s right, you mentioned posting the raw data.

That’s plenty then, don’t worry about breaking out the SPSS and going all statistical on it. The highlights are plenty informative, and we can always play with the raw data to see if there are any other subtler correlations.

I got my first and second contract with no agent (both for multiple books)and I did not have any connections in the industry. I *did* submit to a publisher that I knew took unagented submissions.

KatGMar 18, 2010 @ 17:10:12

The big problem with the you have to know somebody idea is that it comes from Hollywood and a view of fiction publishing as being exactly like Hollywood, where option money is presumed to be given away like hotcakes, but you have to know people to have it given to you. So, many assume that you have to know someone before they’ll give you a publishing deal. But fiction publishing operates on very different dynamics. An editor won’t give his best friend a publishing deal if he doesn’t think the book will work for his house.

But what he will probably do is read the best friend’s ms. to see if he likes it. Meeting a publishing person at a convention, or having a friend of a friend get your ms. into an agent’s office are legitimate practices to get a reading, in part because it gives the publishing people information about your work so they can decide if they are interested in reading it, just like a query letter. But once your ms. is in their hands, it doesn’t matter who you are or who you know. Fiction publishing has no money to throw around like Hollywood does. They don’t do favors. They either go for the product, or they don’t.

Even if you do sell without an agent, you should immediately get one. Agents know the business and how and what to negotiate for, you don’t. If you’ve already got a deal, it’s relatively easy money for them, although of course check out the client roster of said agency to make sure they’ve got some element of…prestige, I guess you could call it.

My first novel was agented and then picked up with zero personal contact. I can say the same for a couple of other authors I know,

However, I do also know one other scottish writer whose manuscript was passed on to another, published and well-regarded author from the States, who in turn passed it on to his editor. That connection got said Scottish writer published, and to some acclaim. Similarly, I think wandering up to an editor from a major games and tie-in book publishers while at a convention got another friend a novel-writing gig. I should however advise that although knowing somebody might help, having a good and publishable book helps considerably more.

No relation to Gary just above me here. 😉 Interesting numbers Jim. Really great study and you put some time and thought behind it all. I keep plugging away and more importantly, continuing to write. I’ll be writing, whether I’m every published or not. It’s a part of who I am. I wouldn’t say no to a nice big publishing contract though. 🙂

I’d tend to agree. Whether you land that first deal with an agent or not, I think a good agent is more than worth that 15%. Mine has more than doubled my income through foreign sales. You can also look at Tobias Buckell’s novel advance survey data, which showed advances tend to be higher for agented authors.

I know a few authors who do it without an agent and are doing quite well for themselves, so it’s certainly possible to build a good career on your own. It wouldn’t be my choice, though.

I suspect you’re right. Knowing someone might get your work read faster, or might get you bumped to a head editor instead of a slush reader, but in the end the story still has to be good. Publishing crap manuscripts for your friends is a good way to either lose your job or destroy your publishing house.

This was a fascinating post, thank you!
I’m not terribly surprised by the number of people reporting that they sold their “first” novel: looking at the times involved, I bet a lot of people chose to spend years refining and polishing their first instead of killing it and moving on to something else. That raises a question about which strategy is more effective: working on a single piece until it’s “ready” or moving on quickly to the next attempt?
If you have time and inclination you might break down the “Years before 1st novel sale” graph by how many books an author wrote before selling one. I kind of suspect that the mean/median time until sale for the “sold my first novel” group is going to be longer than for the groups that sold their second or third novels.

I’ve got a friend who’s been running the data through some heavier-duty statistical software. I’ll be linking to his results as he posts them. I’m also planning to post the raw data, so if there’s anything he or I miss, others are more than welcome to play with the numbers and see what they can find 🙂

[…] } If you don’t read 42 Blips daily, you ought to. Fun stuff there. Yesterday they linked to this about a poll on how and when authors sold their first novel. I didn’t take part in the poll since […]